


Déjà Vu

by MaryPSue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Female Castiel (Supernatural), Female Dean Winchester, Female Sam Winchester, Gen, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 21:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16416401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: They're back on the highway, headed (thankfully) out of Utah, Stevie Nicks crooning about Rhiannon on the stereo. Dee's running a hand through her short brown hair and trying to decide if it's time to buzz it again when Sam says, slow and thoughtful, "Does anything about this feel...weird to you?"...A tale of two sisters, free will, and a series of false starts at a roadside diner.





	Déjà Vu

**Author's Note:**

> This is an extremely self-indulgent experiment. This fandom is uncharted waters for me, so please forgive me any minor transgressions against canon. Most of my direct experience with canon is from season one, so this is mostly going to hew pretty close to that.

Another day, another motel room.

Deanna Winchester props a boot against the plasticky bedspread as she ties the laces, double-knotting the bow. It'd be a hell of a thing to survive monsters, demons, and the wrath of Heaven itself only to be taken out by an untied bootlace. 

They don't have much that needs to be packed - everything of Dee's fits into the army surplus duffel bag she's been dragging around from motel to motel since she was old enough to lift it herself, another pair of jeans and a second sports bra, a few more flannels and worn band t-shirts carefully stuffed in around the arsenal. The pistols and knives anyone would recognise as weapons, but the other stuff - rock salt, herbs and crystals, chalk, paper seals - give off a more crunchy, patchouli-scented kind of vibe. Which is just how Dee likes it. Easier to slip under the radar when people assume you're a stoned hippie than when they assume you're a survivalist gun nut. Makes people overlook things like the pistol tucked into the waistband of her jeans, under her battered leather jacket. Or the knife she's got tucked into the ankle of her boot.

"Sammy," she yells at the closed bathroom door, "you got five minutes to finish messing with your hair and get your ass in the Caddy, or I'm leaving without you."

There's a grumbling reply from the bathroom, but Dee doesn't pay it any attention. She unplugs her sister's laptop from the wall, tucks it into Sam's backpack. The rest of Sam's shit, she doesn't touch. It's either spell components or expensive facial care garbage, and either way, if Dee messes with it she'll never hear the end of it.

It's a full seven minutes before Samantha Winchester comes running out of the motel room with her ash-blonde curls bouncing and her backpack slung over one shoulder. It takes her long enough that Dee has to start the engine and rev it a couple times, earning alternately dirty and impressed looks from the redheaded housekeeper having a smoke outside one of the other rooms. Dee winks in her direction and gives the Caddy's engine an extra rev, just for her.

"Dee," Sam sighs, as she folds herself into the passenger seat of the cherry-red 1967 Cadillac Eldorado that's the closest thing Dee has to a one true love.

"Told you I'd leave without you," Dee cracks, stomping the clutch to the floor and throwing the Caddy into reverse.

...

They're back on the highway, headed (thankfully) out of Utah, Stevie Nicks crooning about Rhiannon on the stereo. Dee's running a hand through her short brown hair and trying to decide if it's time to buzz it again when Sam says, slow and thoughtful, "Does anything about this feel...weird to you?"

Dee takes a minute, rolls it over in her mind. The sunlight pouring in through the Caddy's windows is hot across her leg, the familiar leather smell of the car's a little dusty and tinged with exhaust and gunpowder, the music's crackling in the cassette player, the road's humming by beneath them, her sister's slouched in the passenger seat beside her. It's the only place, Dee thinks, with a sudden stab of inexplicable emotion, that's ever felt like home.

"Nope," she says, at last, with a brief glance over at her sister. "Why? You pickin' up on something?"

Sam shakes her head, eyeing her own shoulder-length curls distrustfully for a moment before scraping them back into a ponytail, digging in her pockets for an elastic band with one hand as she holds her hair back with the other. "Don't think so, it's just - it's weird. Feels like...kind of like there's something I'm forgetting."

"You got your stinky herbal goop from the motel room?" Dee suggests, and Sam shoots a glare in her direction.

"It's a purifying pore mask, Dee. You could stand to give it a try."

"Oh, is that what it was. Thought you were whippin' up something to banish demons. Or anything with a nose."

Sam swats Dee lightly in the shoulder, shoving her into the door, and Dee feigns agony. Sam rolls her eyes, shaking her head as she turns away, but Dee catches the smile that crosses her face before she does. 

The sunlight’s almost too hot, and Dee leans over to crank the AC. It whirs into action, cool breeze ruffling her hair and sneaking up the sleeves of her flannel as she drums along on the steering wheel.

“I can’t think of anything I left at the motel,” Sam says, abruptly. “And it doesn’t - shut up, Dee - doesn’t feel like that anyway. Less ‘oh crap, I left my keys in the house’ and more ‘what was your name again? All that’s coming to mind is Phil but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong’.”

“‘Phil’?” Dee asks, incredulous, and Sam pouts. “Okay, stupid names aside, I see what you’re saying.” She gives the steering wheel another tap, out of time, just to reassure herself that it’s still solid under her grip. “You think Gabby’s messing with us again?”

“I don’t know what I think,” Sam says, with a shrug. “Last I checked, Gabrielle was dead.”

“Yeah, well, how long ago was that,” Dee grumbles to the windshield. Fucking Gabrielle. Not that Dee actually wants her to be dead, more kind of the opposite, but - going straight back to her old tricks instead of letting them know she’s back topside? If Gabby pops up sucking on a lollipop and cracking some joke about a get-out-of-the-Empty-free card, Dee’s going to put a fist in her face, archangel or not. Or - wait, did she end up in Helheim? She’d had that whole pagan-god bit going for a while there, did that make a difference? Hela’s probably easier to trick than primordial nothingness - 

“Dee,” Sam sighs, again. “That way paranoia lies.”

“Is it still paranoia if they really are out to get you?” Dee jokes, tightening her grip on the wheel.

“Look, we don’t know anything yet,” Sam says, placating. “It’s just a weird feeling. Like déjà vu. Maybe - maybe it’s nothing.”

Dee snorts.

“C’mon, Sammy,” she says. “It’s  _us_. When is it ever nothing?”

...

They pull over for lunch at a roadside diner just outside of a podunk town famous, according to its welcome sign, for being the home of the world’s largest kernel of corn. Dee’s never really thought of anywhere in Colorado as being famous for its corn. Probably never really will.

“So these little towns keep having sinkholes opening up under them,” Sam says, scooping up a forkful of her chef’s salad and scowling at the stack of bacon hiding one poor, wilted lettuce leaf. Dee leans over and steals a slice of crispy, bacony goodness off the top, and Sam shoots her a glare, but she keeps going with whatever exciting new discovery she’s dredged up. “Almost looks like it's happening at random, but get this -”

She stops. Dee motions for her to go on, but Sam doesn’t notice. She’s too busy staring out the diner window at the parking lot. Dee takes advantage of the moment to steal another of the unappreciated slices of bacon out of her sister’s rabbit food, before glancing out the window herself. “What? One of your old sorority sisters out there or something?”

Sam doesn’t answer. Dee looks again, but there’s nobody in the parking lot. Just the Caddy and a couple beaters and a semi without a trailer.

“Sam?” she asks, the gnawing of worry growing stronger as she waves her hand in front of Sam’s face. 

Sam blinks, giving her head a little shake that makes her ponytail bounce. “Sorry, I just - has the Caddy always looked like that?”

Dee whirls to look out the window again, fists already clenched in anticipation of putting the hurt on anybody who so much as scratched the paint job - but the Caddy’s sitting there, gleaming in the sunshine, looking whole and unharmed and like cherry pie had a baby with classic rock, as usual.

She shrugs, settling back in the booth. “Looks like the same old Eldorado to me.”

Sam squints at it.

“Has it always been a Cadillac?” she asks, after what feels like an uncomfortably long time. 

Dee snorts a laugh. "Okay, very funny." When Sam doesn't so much as crack a smile, though, her laughter dies in her throat. "Come on, Sammy, you know it has."

"Yeah, I know, but - had it always been a Cadillac last week?"

Dee opens her mouth, probably to say something dismissive, but then stops and considers the Caddy. 

She and Sam grew up in that backseat, roughhousing or flipping through dollar store colouring books and workbooks or napping on the cracked red leather bench seat while their mother drove them all around the country, saving people, hunting things. The Legos trapped somewhere in the backseat still rattle whenever Dee hits a pothole. Her and Sammy's initials are still carved into the rear passenger-side door where Dee etched them with her very first pocket knife. Their mom had whupped her ass good for that. Now that she's older, now she really understands the value of a classic car, Dee can get that, but she still can't bring herself to regret doing the carving. She and Sam are as much a part of that car as it is of them.

Unless it isn't.

"You're thinkin' there's some kinda..." Dee waves a hand vaguely through the air, then scoops up a fry and deposits it in her mouth. "Timeline, memory alteration, false reality bullshit going on."

"Say it, don't spray it," Sam says automatically at Dee's full mouth. Dee shrugs and chomps down on another fry. "I think so, maybe. I'm just not sure why. Or what's changed."

"And if we can figure that out, we can figure out whose fault it is," Dee muses. "Or we can prove that nothing's changed and you've finally gone off the deep end. Either way, sounds good."

Sam's eyebrows shoot towards her hairline, but she shovels a forkful of greens and sliced egg into her mouth instead of coming back with something clever.

"Get you anything else?" the waitress asks. Her demeanour's casual, almost bored, but the looks she keeps darting in Dee's direction sure look interested. Automatically, Dee shoots her a grin, and the waitress goes as red as her hair.

"No, I think that's it," Sam says, folding the menu shut and passing it back to the waitress, who nods, still pink, and consults her pad.

"All right. One chef's salad, one southwest burger, coming right up," she says, before turning and disappearing towards the kitchen.

Dee blinks, looking down at the table in front of her. Only the scratched Formica surface stares back.

"Earth to Dee," Sam says.

Dee glances back up at her sister. "You were saying?"

Sam squints at her. "I wasn't saying anything."

"Sure you were," Dee argues. "Something about..."

It's on the tip of her tongue, the shape of it hovering in her mind, but for some reason the words won't come. Dee waves a hand irritably, grabbing a stir stick from the cup by the window and bending it in half. "Forget it. Déjà vu."

She can feel Sam's eyes on her, and Dee looks out the window rather than meet Sam's gaze. The parking lot is mostly empty, a couple of rust-eaten old beaters and a semi with no trailer parked along under the window, the Impala sitting sleek and black and shining in the middle of them all like a cut gem in a gravel pit.

Dee blinks again, but whatever thought she'd been on the verge of having has already slithered away.

"Dee," Sam says, a little more forcefully.

"Yeah, I'm listening," Dee says, turning away from the window. She has the uncomfortable feeling she's lost the plot.

"Hello, Dee."

The familiar voice, the sudden warm presence beside her, are nearly enough to make Dee jump six feet straight up out of the booth. As it is, she does bang her knee hard against the underside of the table before settling back, one hand pressed to her heart, which is battering wildly against her ribs. "Jesus, Cass. Way to give a girl a heart attack."

The angel blinks crystal blue eyes in Dee's direction. "Your cardiac function is acceptable, Dee. You are not having a heart attack."

"Figure of speech," Dee sighs, running a hand through her hair.

"What's up, Cass?" Sam asks, leaning forward across the table. "You find anything out about those sinkholes?"

"They are not connected to Hell, as you had feared," Cass says gravely. "They appear to be connected to...nothing.”

“So they’re regular sinkholes,” Dee says, and Cass tilts her head to look at her, that bright blue stare unnerving. 

“You misunderstand, Dee. These are not simply holes in the ground. They are holes into  _nothingness_.”

Dee whistles under her breath.

"Well, that can't be good," Sam mutters. “You didn’t get a closer look?”

“One opened feet from me while I was in Topeka. This is how I obtained my information. But I had to come find you,” Cass says, and there’s something about how earnestly and yet how matter-of-factly she says it that kicks a little chill up Dee’s spine. “I had to -”

She stops, staring straight ahead, and her eyebrows contract in an expression Dee would pin down somewhere between confusion and surprise.

“What’s up?” Dee asks, prodding the angel with an elbow, and Cass slowly turns towards Dee, the expression on her face barely shifting but still somehow curdling towards fear. 

“There was something important that I had to do,” Cass says, like she’s even surprised by the words coming out of her own mouth. “Something urgent, something that concerned some danger to the two of you. And I have forgotten what it is.”

“Well, if it was important, it’ll come back to you,” Dee says, exchanging a startled glance with Sam.  _Danger?_

Cass turns away from her, surveying the diner.

“I’m an Angel of the Lord, Dee. We do not just...forget matters of consequence and let them ‘come back to’ us.” She looks down at herself, at the dated 90s Agent Scully pantsuit and overcoat she’s so attached to for some reason, examines her hand at length, splaying the fingers out in front of her like she’s admiring the nail polish she isn’t wearing. She’d once mentioned that she saw no purpose in ‘adorning her vessel’, but she’d still let Sammy paint her toenails on a stakeout once. It’s one of the memories Dee likes to take out and blow the dust off of on long winter nights, even if she’ll never admit it. “Something here is not 

“More coffee?”

Dee starts. She looks up at the waitress, tries to remember what she’d just been thinking about, but it’s already retreating back into the depths of her head. Well, if it was important, it’ll come back to her. “Yeah, thanks.” She pushes the chipped ceramic mug across the table, and the waitress pours coffee so black it looks more like ink.

“So it looks almost random,” Sam says, as the waitress walks away, leaning over the table to scoot around the little packets of creamer she’s spread out over its surface again. “But get this - oh, Dee, come  _on_!”

Dee looks up from the creamer she’s peeling the top off of, and grins at the bitchface Sam makes at her when she dumps the creamer into her coffee. “Whoops.”

Sam snatches the empty creamer packet from Dee’s hand, firmly smushing it back onto the table about where Dee had stolen it from. 

“What does this look like to you?” she demands, gesturing to the pile of creamers.

Dee stares at it.

“A mess,” she hazards.

“Ley lines, Dee,” Sam says, smacking a hand down on the table. “The holes are opening up at points of convergence.”

Dee winces. 

"You got an actual map?" she asks, surveying the pattern Sam's laid out on the diner table. "Maybe we can figure out where the next one's going to open up." She's not sure what they can do about the giant holes in the ground that already exist, but - "If something fugly's causing this, maybe we can get the drop on it and gank it before anybody else gets hurt."

"Way ahead of you," Sam says, patting the backpack at her feet that holds her laptop. "I plotted it out. There are three possibilities I'm seeing - one's near Bend in Oregon, one's out in Maine, and one's here in Colorado." She frowns at the table, scrunching up her nose. "Trouble is, I'm not sure how to tell which of them will go next."

Dee steals another creamer packet from the tableau, dumping its contents into her coffee. "We start with whatever's closest. Ready for another road trip?"

...

The town Sammy points them to is barely a town at all, more a cluster of houses huddled in the trees like they're trying to hide from the road. There's one streetlight and a gas station that looks pretty abandoned. Dee's sure that there's also gotta be a bar around here somewhere, but she's got no idea where to even start looking.

She pulls the Impala up in front of the gas station, casting an uneasy glance at the dead eye of its sole unboarded window. "So what now?" It's occurring to her, again, as it has many times over the trip, that this would be a perfect trap. Some big, showy, weird disaster all over the country to get their attention -

"I'm not sure," Sam admits. "I was hoping Cass would get back to us with some more info before we got here, but I haven't heard from her."

And if that doesn't have alarm bells clanging in the back of Dee's head, not much will. She looks around at the mountain rising dark behind them, the trees closing them in like towering black walls as the last of the reddish sun disappears. Yep. Definitely feels like Trap City.

"You asked Cass for help on this one, huh," she says, the steering wheel digging into the palms of her clenched fists. "Any theories you'd like to share with the class?"

"Dee," Sam says, infuriatingly calm, that 'let's be reasonable about this' voice that Dee's always hated.

"Sam," she says back, pitching her voice in a mocking imitation of Sam's tone, and Sam sighs.

"Look, I didn't want to start anything if we didn't have any reason to worry, but - enormous holes opening up in the ground and swallowing people? At points of concentrated occult power? All over the country? That doesn't sound like your run-of-the-mill haunting, Dee." She falls silent, fiddling uncomfortably with the hair tie around her wrist, before she says, trying for flippancy and falling just short, "I just wanted to make sure it wasn't, you know. Our friends downstairs."

_You mean_  your  _friend downstairs_ , Dee thinks, but for once, is wise enough not to say. Even knowing Lucifer is gone, toast, kaput, doesn't mean that little silver thread of fear's ever going to unstitch itself from the back of Sam's mind. Dee ought to know that better than anyone.

“Well,” she says, instead, “Cass ain’t Angel Siri. I bet there’s still plenty of cleaning up to do up on Cloud Nine or wherever.” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. "If it was important, she'd get back to us."

She frowns at the tape deck, the little glowing eye of the display.

"Dee?" Sam asks, and Dee shuts her eyes, gives her head a little shake to settle it right on her shoulders.

"Just - déjà vu, for a second there." She pinches the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, blowing out a long, heavy breath.

The pounding makes Dee jump, scrabbling for her pistol. Sam's hand on her arm holds her back, though, long enough for her to see the official-issue flashlight that's banging against the Impala's window.

Dee breathes out, again, puts on her most winning smile as she rolls down the window. "Evening, officer."

The deputy the flashlight belongs to is a little difficult to see in the fading light, but she can't be more than thirty, the tight ponytail she's pulled her coppery hair into aging what's probably a perfectly nice face in the daylight. Dee bets she could be a babe with her hair down. And some better clothes."You folks lost?"

"Only in your eyes," Dee says. The look on the deputy's face is worth Sam’s elbow to her ribs.

"Uh, actually, we are," Sam pipes up, as Dee pours her energy into grinning. "Could we get some directions to the motel? I think we got turned around in these trees." She’s using that special tone of voice she reserves for law enforcement officers and teachers, the one that makes Dee want to puke in her mouth. 

The deputy eyes both Sam and Dee with a look that’s thankfully slightly more amused than disbelieving, and jabs a thumb backwards over her shoulder. Dee looks where she’s pointing, and sees, half-hidden between the trees on the other side of the road, the sign for the motel.

She meets the deputy’s eyes, flashes her a smile, and shrugs.

“Um. Thank you,” Sam says.

The deputy huffs a little laugh as she straightens up, and Dee can tell she’s trying not to smile. “You girls make sure you get in safe, now. These woods can be pretty misleading after dark.”

She gives the Impala’s roof a pat as she turns to walk away, apparently oblivious to Dee’s spluttering.

" 'Girls'?"

Sam, Dee realises, is looking at her strangely.

" 'Girls'," Dee mutters darkly, twisting the key in the ignition.

"Dee, we  _are_  -"

"I'm not! I'm -" Dee has the uncomfortable feeling of being suddenly unaware, mid-sentence, of what she herself was planning to say. She settles on, "twenty-six years old! I'm a grown-ass woman." The words taste strange in her mouth, and she pulls a face as she floors the clutch and shifts into first.

"I dunno," Sam says, looking out the window with deliberate nonchalance as Dee whips the Impala around the deserted parking lot. "Kinda think she's got your number."

"Okay, you can shut up," Dee warns. Sam just raises both eyebrows and half-nods, with a smile that's halfway between saintly and smug. Dee rolls her eyes as she peels out of the parking lot and jogs across the road. "Bitch."

"Jerk," Sam echoes.

...

The motel has a kitchenette, which is to say the tiniest fridge Dee's ever seen that isn't a beer fridge, and two electric burners embedded into a counter. Still, by their standards, it's pretty damn fancy.

"Nice," Dee says, surveying the fridge. It won't take an advanced engineering degree to fit a 24-pack into  _this_  bad boy. Not that they're planning to be in town long enough for her to drink her way through it, but in this line of work, it always pays to be prepared. "What's up, Sammy? Not impressed with the new digs?"

Sam, hanging back by the door with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her oversized denim jacket, just worries her lower lip between her teeth and shakes her head.

Dee drops her duffel on the bed nearest the fridge, shrugging out of her jacket and leaving it in a heap on top of the bag. "Come on, Professor, what's drifting through that big brain of yours?"

Sam looks at Dee like Dee's an LSAT question, and Sam's trying to figure out the trick. "How old did you say you were, again?"

"Twenty-" Dee starts automatically, but as soon as the first 't' leaves her mouth she knows it's wrong. "No, hang on, that was..."

Sam nods grimly, pursing her lips like Dee's just confirmed her worst fear.

"Shit," Dee says, sitting heavily on the bed beside her stuff. In a way, she can remember the last however many years, the searching, the hunts, the apocalypses, averted and otherwise. The deaths. But in another, somehow much realer way, it feels like hardly any time has passed since she and Sam put Stanford in the rearview mirror.

She can't remember - not  _details_ , exactly, because her memory is etched with little things, the particular blue of Cass' vessel's eyes, the strange agony of hellhound bites, the brightness of Charlie's smile - but  _particulars_. How long she and Sam have been on the road. How exactly they dealt with this latest apocalypse. How many of those there've been, now. Whether or not there are still angels in Heaven, or a Heaven at all.

How old she is.

"Aw, shit," Dee repeats, with feeling. "This is all fake, isn't it? Somebody's messing with us."

Sam nods, scooping up a forkful of her chef's salad and scowling at the stack of bacon hiding one poor, wilted lettuce leaf. "Almost looks like it's happening at random, but get this -"

She stops, staring at Dee across the table.

"What the -" Sam says. "Didn't I say that already?"

"Y'know, usually I'd say you're losing it," Dee says. She glances out the window at the parking lot, and sure enough, there's the Impala, parked between a rust-eaten Crown Vic and a semi with no trailer. They sit there innocently, not doing anything suspicious, no matter how hard Dee glares.

"But?" Sam prompts, and Dee starts, banging her knee against the underside of the table.

"Ow! Shit!"

"Dee," Sam presses, and before Dee can decide between sticking out her tongue and flipping her sister off, Sam's already moved on. "I think...there's something more going on here than regular déjà vu."

Dee casts a cautious glance around the diner. Apart from the waitress stacking coffee cups behind the counter, the place is eerily empty and dead silent. Dee can't believe she hadn't noticed anything off about it before now.

"You're thinking there's some...false reality, mind manipulation bullshit going on," she says.

"I think so," Sam agrees, slowly. "What I can't figure out is why. Or what's changed."

"Or if you've just gone off the deep end," Dee adds, because it's her job as the older sibling to make sure her little sister doesn't start believing her own hype.

Sam's bitchface is in especially fine form today, Dee notices.

"Let's start with what we know," Sam says, at last. "What'd we do yesterday?"

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky," Dee says, in her best Brain voice.

Sam flashes a smile, but it's brief, pensive.

" _Do_  you remember what we did yesterday?" she asks.

" 'course," Dee says, carefully gripping her burger to make sure the patty won't go shooting out the back when she bites into it. "We -"

She stops.

"Take your time," Sam says. There's a glint in her eye that looks kinda like triumph.

Dee takes a big bite out of her burger and chews on it while she chews on the memory. Let it never be said she can't multitask. 

The burger's good, hot and greasy and smothered in cheese and guac and bacon. Dee  _had_  been enjoying it. 

"We checked into the motel," she says, slowly, swallowing the bite of burger that seems to have turned into cardboardy mush in her mouth.

"What was the motel called?" Sam asks, still with that borderline-smug expression on her face. 

Dee takes another miserable, gluey bite of her burger. "You know they all blur together."

"Then what's this town called?" Sam asks. "You read the welcome sign, I know you did, you made that stupid joke about the giant corn kernel."

"All right," Dee sighs. She sets down the burger with regret. "We got whammied. How?"

Sam drums her fingers against the tabletop, eyebrows drawn together as she stares thoughtfully into the middle distance. Or at Dee's ear. One of the two. "Is this all mental, or are we in a constructed world right now?” 

Dee casts a last, mournful look at the burger, which may or may not actually exist, before settling on the fries. “And if it’s not all mind games - who’s got the juice to do something like this? How far back did they change?”

“If they went to all this trouble, I’m betting it goes all the way back,” Sam mutters darkly to her salad.

“So we are talking Gabby then,” Dee says, thinking hard. It’s actually not a bad option, as their options go - Gabby’ll give them a rough ride, jerk them around a lot, but of all the people who might want to stick them in a false reality for some unfathomable reason, she’s the least likely to be actively trying to kill them. At least, not so that they stay dead. And she might even let Dee score with the waitress.

“She’s not the only one who could do it,” Sam says, twirling her fork in her lettuce. 

“But she’s the one who’d think it’s funny,” Dee points out. 

A smile crosses Sam’s face, and she shakes her head, leaning her chin in her hand as she stares out the window.

“This could all still be mind games, too,” Dee says, cutting whatever Sam’s musing on short. “We could be flat on our backs in some kinda dungeon somewhere, dreaming sweet dreams about our waking lives -”

“And the point of that would be what?” Sam points out, putting a neat puncture hole in Dee’s theory. “Anybody who’d lock us in some kind of dungeon isn’t going to be wasting time giving us dreams.”

“Unless they wanted intel,” Dee says, dunking her fries into the little cup of ketchup. “Something they knew they wouldn’t get through torture.”

“Yeah, but what? And how’re they trying to get it? Nobody else has even talked to us except the waitress you shamelessly flirted with, and even she just took our order. We’ve only talked to...each...” Sam trails off, her eyes going wide as she stares at Dee.

“Nope. Nuh uh,” Dee says. “I think I’ll take my chances with Gabrielle.”

“It’d be the perfect trap, Dee,” Sam says quietly. “Who else do we trust?”

“Well, yeah, how do I know  _you’re_  not the sleeper agent?” Dee growls. “ ‘Cause you sure didn’t waste any time telling me this world ain’t real and I can’t trust anybody else in it.”

“We can’t,” Sam says. “Anybody could be the person who put us here - they could’ve made themselves into anybody we know, or made us think we’ve known and trusted them forever - they could be, be, Bonnie, or Cass, or - or somebody in our family -”

“God, I hope not,” Dee groans. “I’ve had enough surprise half-siblings for one lifetime.”

“There’s only been one.”

“Still more than enough for a lifetime,” Dee says, with feeling. “Eve’s alright, she mostly doesn’t suck, but nobody else.”

“Eve might be the one who trapped us here,” Sam says miserably. “Or you might be. Or me.”

“Hey. No. We gotta trust each other, or there’s no way we’re getting outta this,” Dee says, leaning over so she can look her sister in the eye. “Whoever put us here, that’s gotta be what they want, right? Us at each other’s throats?”

“Sounds like something somebody trying to convince me to trust them would say,” Sam cracks, with a smile that makes it clear that she really isn’t joking.

Dee shrugs one shoulder. “Think about it, Sammy. All of Heaven and Hell spent like five years trying to get us to pick a fight, remember?”

“Those memories could all be false,” Sam whispers, leaning her forehead in one hand and her elbow on the table. “Maybe none of this was ever real and I’m back at Stanford with Jess having stress dreams because of my interview...”

“Oh, my  _god_!  _Enough_  already!”

The shout makes both Dee and Sam jump. The redheaded waitress is standing, hands on her hips, at the end of the table, and the way she's glaring at them gives Dee a sudden and vivid flash of Bonnie Singer sizing them up before declaring them both idjits.

"This is ridiculous," the waitress steams, gesturing wildly with one arm towards the empty diner. "Every damn time I backtrack and start over, you two take it right back off the rails into some existential crisis again! Seriously, you both need therapy."

Dee shoots a look at Sam, sees that Sam's expression is a mirror of what's going through her own head. Dee leans down, cracking a crooked grin in the waitress' direction as she pretends to scratch her leg, surreptitiously working the knife out of her boot as she does. Its grip is cool and smooth in her palm, a reassuring solid object. Forget therapy. All Dee needs is a weapon. Or a bottle, in a pinch. "You wanna let us in on whatever the hell you're talkin' about, lady?"

"All I wanted," the waitress says, leaning forward and planting both hands on the table, "was a quick, straightforward case."

"Because we get so many of those these days," Sam says.

The waitress continues as though she hasn't heard, her voice artificially sweet and just a little threatening. "Something simple. Basic. Time and place ambiguous, so I didn't need to know anything about American geography or which of your friends, allies, enemies, and family are  _dead_  for the moment. Speaking of, congratulations, I'm pretty sure you're the only show on television ever to fridge both its own main characters, give yourselves a round of applause. Death in comics has  _nothing_  on you."

That's a weird and incoherent thing to say, even for what seems to be some kind of reality-warping creature in an unassuming human suit. Dee wracks her brains, trying to think of what might be able to do what it sounds like this waitress has done, mess with their minds and their timeline. She's not helping by refusing to flash glowing eyes or fangs or wing shadows or anything at them. Actually, there's nothing visibly weird about her at all - maybe a little too much eyeliner, but that's about it. If Dee didn't already know something was up, she'd assume the waitress was, well, a waitress.

"Are you a friend of G- I mean, Loki's, then?" Sam asks. Dee's pretty sure she's thinking about the same incident Dee is. Reality television is actually somehow more torturous to live through than it is to watch.

The waitress brushes the question aside with another wave of her hand. "I just wanted gorgeous flannel-clad, shotgun-wielding butches who fight monsters. But what do I get? A headache! Plot holes popping up all over the Midwest! More false starts and restarts than I can count! And  _you_  two!" She jabs a finger at Dee's nose, narrowing her eyes at Sam. "You were just supposed to do what you were told," she says, and honestly sounds more exasperated than actually angry. 

"Historically, that hasn't been our strong suit," Sam says.

"Yeah, they don't call us Team Free Will just 'cause of how nice it rolls off the tongue," Dee says, adjusting her grip on the knife under the table. She wishes she had an angel blade or something else a little stronger than earthly steel on her, but...hindsight.

The waitress shakes her head. "I should have known. I knew about the French mistake, I knew about changing channels, I knew about Chuck -"

"You know Chuck?" Sam asks, casting a startled glance at Dee. Well, that might go a ways towards making sense out of this whole mess.

"- and yet somehow I didn't anticipate that this would get all meta on me?" the waitress monologues on, ignoring Sam. "I'm an idiot."

"One thing we can agree on, then," Dee says, shifting her weight so she's ready to spring out of the booth. She nods in Sam's direction, hoping Sam will pick up on her cue. The waitress is in stabbing distance, after all. If Sam can keep her talking, keep her distracted -

"Don't even bother," the waitress says, with a pointed glance at Dee. Okay. So add mind reading to the list of Shit This Bitch Can Do. "I'm out. This was a mistake from word one."

She straightens up, reaching into the pocket of her apron, and pulls out a pad and a pen. It looks like the pad she used to take down their orders, but a little squarer, and yellow. When Dee arches her neck, she thinks she can make out line after line of tiny, cramped writing, but she doesn't catch more than a glimpse before the waitress angles it away.

"Just one question," she says, and Dee braces herself for - well, anything other than what the waitress says next. "Do you guys feel like this is a little derivative? I mean, innocent people trapped in a diner, not realising they're being forced to play out the whims of someone with a power they weren't meant to have and really don't know how to use? There's some kind of wry commentary about authorship involved? It's all a little Sandman, don't you think?"

"What, like...exit light, enter night?" Dee asks, mystified, and the waitress shakes her head.

"Not Gaiman fans. Okay, well, it was worth asking. Not that it matters anyway," she says, and draws a line from the top left corner of the pad all the way down to the bottom right.

...

Dean looks down at the bootlaces in his hands, and lets them go, carefully, straightening up.

"Sam?" he calls, warily.

The bathroom door swings open to reveal Sam, looking about as spooked as Dean feels.

"Did you -" he starts, and Dean nods.

"What the hell  _was_  that?"

Sam shakes his head, gingerly touching his forehead and then staring at his own fingers like he's going to find the answers there.

"Déjà vu, I guess," he says, when his fingerprints refuse to spill their secrets.

"Weirdest déjà vu I ever felt," Dean says, but the feeling is already fading. "C'mon, we don't got all day to hang around while you mess with your hair. You got five minutes to get your ass in the Impala, or I'm leaving without you."

"As if you ever would," Sam says, turning back to the mirror.


End file.
